The only lesson that can be taken from the seventies is that it is a very foolish thing for a state to become dependent on a particular resource or product that it cannot make for itself and must import, because that puts the economic welfare of that state at the mercy of the exporting nations.

Jacobs believed that the best way to achieve such sustainable economies is to examine what is now imported into a region and develop the conditions to produce those goods from local resources with local labor. She referred to this process as "import replacing."

What happened in the 70s provided an opening to move away from imported oil, replacing it with other forms and means of energy production. This would have required a number of actions all of which where stomped on by TPTB, notably the Big Seven oil companies. The reasons for the stomp is easy: import replacement restructures the economy, replacing the companies importing the good and the companies relying on the imported good for their profit margins.